The invention relates to a paint roller.
Conventional paint rollers consist of a cylindrical roller body, also referred to below as a roller or paint roll, with an inner cylindrical tubular body which serves to receive a roller coating made of plush, felt or foamed material or similar material. In the interior of the tubular body, a slotted, radially widening clamp sleeve is generally provided. In one embodiment, on one side in the tubular body, the clamp sleeve is secured by a corresponding projection against axial displacement. On the other side, in the direction of the opening of the tubular body, an end piece is engaged in order to prevent the sleeve falling out. In many cases, the end piece, like the clamp sleeve, is also rotatably mounted and both individual parts serve to receive and bear a handle to be inserted into the roller body. The clamp sleeve performs the function of fixing the roller body axially on the handle. The handle as a rule consists of a bent metal wire and, on its lower end, a handgrip made of plastic.
Such a construction nevertheless suffers from disadvantages. On the one hand, a number of individual parts are necessary for the paint roller, which is frequently thrown away after use, and these parts not only make production more expensive but are also undesirable from an environmental point of view. In particular the construction of the handle as a combination of metal and plastic which is injection-molded on can be exploited only with great difficulty in raw material recovery.
For this reason, attempts have been made in the past to manufacture the handle from plastic as a single piece.
In some embodiments, however, it had to be admitted that the handle does not have adequate stability for the practical application.
It is true that adequate stability is achieved in other embodiments through the use of fiber-reinforced plastics, but this makes production more expensive at the same time. The possibility exists, moreover, of simply dimensioning the handle so it is larger but this leads to increased material consumption and is therefore equally inadvisable for reasons of cost.